UPDATE 3:02 p.m. ET: The letter sent by the league office to Suh promises an expedited hearing and a decision before Sunday’s game, if Suh appeals the suspension. Under the rules, however, Suh has three days to file his appeal. So he apparently could wait until Friday and necessarily delay the process past Sunday, allowing him to play against the Saints. We’re in the process of gathering more information regarding the league’s proposed timeline and the relevant terms of the CBA.

_________________

Quote:

Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right....

November 29th, 2011, 4:39 pm

TheRealWags

Modmin Dude

Joined: December 31st, 2004, 9:55 amPosts: 12312

Re: When is Suh going to learn

mwill2 wrote:

Man, Mike Florio loves to put anti-Lions spin on every detail of every story, doesn't he?

Its not only him over there; another one of his posters/journalists digs the Lions every chance he gets.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has fined Detroit Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh at least three times in two seasons for plays he considered beyond the scope of the game. Those fines, totaling at least $42,500, had little impact on Suh's approach and failed as a deterrent from the actions that led to his ejection from Thursday's game against the Green Bay Packers.

So Goodell has taken the next logical step in a progression of discipline that, for Suh's sake, must stop here. Tuesday's two-game suspension must catch Suh's attention, because neither Suh nor the Lions want to contemplate what could come next.

Barring a successful appeal, Suh will lose about $164,000. But I doubt that total will mean much to a player whose rookie contract included $40 million guaranteed. What should impact Suh is the implied threat of all suspensions. The NFL can give him a lucrative career beyond his wildest imagination, and it can also take it away.

NFL history is packed with players who, like Suh, plowed through the line between aggressive and dirty. Most of them, however, played in an era long since past. The NFL's place atop America's mainstream entertainment structure requires a more disciplined environment.

In a statement released Tuesday, the league said Suh has now violated its on-field rules five times since joining the Lions in 2010. (We know of three fines and this suspension, so one episode remains unreported.) Speaking over the weekend on NBC, longtime NFL safety Rodney Harrison said he didn't begin to curb his style until he started missing games as a result.

"I was a young player once and I was very prideful and arrogant, just like Ndamukong Suh," Harrison said. "But I didn't learn until the commissioner handed me a suspension. Then I really understood the impact of what it did to my teammates in that locker room."

Under the terms of the suspension, Suh will miss the Lions' game Sunday night against the New Orleans Saints and the Dec. 11 game against the Minnesota Vikings. As we've discussed, I'm not sure if the Lions would beat the Saints even with Suh and they should defeat the Vikings without him. When he rejoins the team Dec. 12, hopefully Suh will have realized that the game can go on without him if he can't conform to its standards.

There should be no doubting how serious Goodell has taken Suh's career path, culminating with the pounding of Packers guard Evan Dietrich-Smith's head into the ground three times followed by stomping on his arm. On only one other occasion has Goodell suspended a player longer than one game for actions that occurred on the field; that was Albert Haynesworth's stomp on the throat of Dallas Cowboys center Andre Gurode in 2006.

Suh's past history played a factor, but it's clear Goodell wanted to send as strong of a message as he could while remaining within the confines of the NFL's collective bargaining agreement.

If this discipline doesn't get Suh's attention, I'm not sure what will.

Earlier: Suh reached out Sunday night to Goodell. Former NFL coach Tony Dungy blames the Lions and coach Jim Schwartz as much as Suh for this episode. Thursday's events were the end of Suh's innocence. You have to wonder if Suh's far-reaching corporate sponsorships will take a hit. We'll soon know if his apology was genuine or mere spin.

Rampant speculation has followed Adam Schefter's report on Ndamukong Suh's plans to appeal his two-game suspension. We have yet to hear from either Suh or the Detroit Lions, but here is what we know:

Suh plans to abide by the terms of his suspension this week, staying away from the Lions' practice facility until the appeal is complete. Former NFL coaches Ted Cottrell and Art Shell are the candidates to hear the case and make a decision. A decision would come by the end of the week.

Anything beyond that is guesswork. NF commissioner Roger Goodell contemplated the suspension for a long weekend and it's hard to imagine Cottrell or Shell suddenly reversing it. So at the very least, it seems reasonable that Suh will miss Sunday night's game against the New Orleans Saints.

Would the suspension be cut in half, allowing Suh to return for the Lions' Dec. 11 game against the Minnesota Vikings? I guess it's possible, although I wonder what new information would surface to motivate leniency.

Some of you don't understand why Goodell encouraged Suh to appeal, as Schefter reported. I consider that a matter of semantics. Goodell is highly motivated to ensure the integrity of the discipline and appeal system he has arranged. Encouraging Suh to utilize it lends credence to what could otherwise be viewed as a dead end.

In the end, Suh has extended this spectacle in hopes of getting the suspension reduced. You could say he has nothing to lose. But I still think he would be better off avoiding any suggestion that he is still trying to defend or justify his actions. So it goes.

seifert is also pretty anti lion - nothing from him on robison s groin kick...typical vikings fan. now he s criticial of suh if he appeals which the nfl commissioner suggested suh do?

November 29th, 2011, 10:10 pm

thelomasbrowns

Pro Bowl Player

Joined: August 24th, 2010, 9:54 pmPosts: 2539

Re: When is Suh going to learn

The latest PFT post (I won't do them the dignity of posting it here) is a total hit job on Schwartz. In his presser today, he said Suh has to take responsibility for his actions, but said ultimately it's the coach's responsibility. PFT conveniently cut out the second part and made it seem like Schwartz was throwing Suh under the bus. Bunch of garbage. See all of Schwartz's comments here: http://espn.go.com/blog/nfcnorth/post/_ ... untability

_________________Jim Caldwell, on whether Jim Harbaugh is stealing his thunder: "Me? I don't have any thunder."

November 29th, 2011, 11:38 pm

Stallion

Play by Play Announcer - Al Michaels

Joined: October 15th, 2005, 12:45 pmPosts: 1834

Re: When is Suh going to learn

The NFL as a company has more or less lost me. It is to the point that I have considered abandoning the game altogether. There are things like this that happen all the time but it is rarely drummed up this much. It also seems to me that the refs were protecting the Packers that game instead of calling it fair.

_________________2011 Adopted Lion: Rob Sims/Looking for a side job at I.H.O.P because he can't stop making pancakes.

The NFL as a company has more or less lost me. It is to the point that I have considered abandoning the game altogether. There are things like this that happen all the time but it is rarely drummed up this much. It also seems to me that the refs were protecting the Packers that game instead of calling it fair.

I'm not ready to abandon watching the game and I'm not condoning what Suh did (in fact the stomp / any stomp or kick is flat out wrong) but it does feel like there is a certain amount of 'politically correct piling on' here.

Even this article questions Suh's level of remorse and I'm not sure that a reporter can fairly measure that.

So even as the Lions tried their best Tuesday to ignore the elephant notin the room, the question remains: What do they do with Ndamukong Suh?

The NFL weighed in with its initial answer, handing down a two-game suspension in response to Suh's helmet-grinding, foot-stomping ejection in last week's loss to Green Bay.

And the Lions all-Pro defensive tackle countered with his own reply, appealing the suspension at the urging of the NFL Players Association and others, no matter how tone deaf that strikes some in Suh's growing legion of critics.

But while the expedited (and likely fruitless) appeal won't change the immediate plans — Suh is expected to miss Sunday's game at New Orleans and next week's home game against Minnesota — it still left the entire organization, and particularly the players, stuck in an awkward limbo.

Not just because the team returned to practice without its best defensive player. But also because his absence leaves his teammates to answer for him, literally and figuratively.

And while none of them cared to reprimand Suh publicly Tuesday, I think it's safe to say they've had enough of the nonsense, just like most everyone else, including the league's disciplinarians.

After getting tossed for stomping on Packers guard Evan Dietrich-Smith — not to mention the Ford family's treasured Thanksgiving tradition — Suh spent a good chunk of last Friday meeting with coaches and teammates before finally issuing his day-late, dollars-short apology to the Lions and his "true fans" via Facebook. Team officials also issued a statement then, expressing all the proper regrets to try to minimize the public-relations damage after a nationally televised meltdown.

But Suh has yet to speak to reporters since his defiant postgame news conference took a bad situation and made it immeasurably worse. (He also has yet to apologize to Dietrich-Smith, as far as we know. The Packers guard avoided the media Tuesday in Green Bay.)

Suh was back with the team in Allen Park on Tuesday morning, but got the anticipated phone call from the NFL about the suspension — one that included a ban from the practice facility — and just like that, he was kicked out. Again.

So we'll have to wait a while longer to hear from him directly about where he goes from here, or how he truly intends to make amends and start repairing his reputation while the Lions try to salvage a playoff berth.

"He's going to have to deal with the repercussions of it personally," said veteran defensive end Kyle Vanden Bosch, a team captain who said he had a 1-on-1 talk with Suh last Friday. "We'll handle the effects it has on us as a team. But it's gonna be tough for him."

Short on contrition

It'll be tougher still, because for all of Suh's good qualities — on and off the field — contrition doesn't appear to be one of them, at least publicly.

Yet, Lions coach Jim Schwartz said he's had "a lot of conversations with (Suh) the last two days and I think he is in a different spot," than he was — emotionally — after the game.

"I think, for sure, he understands the position that he put his team in the game, and also the position that we're in right now," Schwartz added. "And he feels a tremendous sense of responsibility for that. There's an accountability for what we do on the field and he — particularly these last couple days — is well aware of that."

And yes, I'm well aware contrition isn't exactly what the Lions — or their playoff-starved fans — need from Suh to reach the postseason. But therein lies the real challenge going forward.

Now that one of the team's cornerstone players — the face of the franchise, alongside quarterback Matthew Stafford — has crossed the line, how will he handle this tightrope walk? How will he handle the backlash? How will he handle his emotions? And, quite frankly, how will it affect his play on the field?

Because if Suh thought he was a target before all this — and that's why he said he went to New York to meet with commissioner Roger Goodell and others — it's going to be far worse for him now. Everyone from Hall of Famer "Mean" Joe Greene to Suh's head coach was saying that this week — "Everybody knows that he's had this one, and players are gonna push him to the edge," Schwartz said — as this Suh saga spiraled out of control.

Keeping his cool

Look, the sooner he returns, the sooner his teammates can forget about what he has done. And the sooner he can start doing something about it.

But for the foreseeable future, the question is always going to be whether Suh can keep his cool.

"It's difficult," Vanden Bosch said. "A lot of things happen in the game and you're taught to be aggressive, you're taught to be as physical as possible, and when people are doing things to you throughout the course of a game to try to antagonize you … sometimes it's difficult to swallow your pride and walk away and move on.

"Especially in the heat of the moment. A lot of people just want to say, well, he just should've walked away. And even though that's the right thing to do, in that moment, a lot of people don't understand how difficult that is to do."

Maybe not, but Suh better understand now.

And I think that's the real appeal here — not to the NFL, but to Suh. He better swallow his pride — easy for me to say, I know — before he lets it swallow his career.

This whole affair has been a huge distraction for the team and it will be interesting to see if Schwartz can channel all this confusion and angst into some tangible results on the field come Sunday in New Orleans.

_________________

November 30th, 2011, 7:31 am

TheRealWags

Modmin Dude

Joined: December 31st, 2004, 9:55 amPosts: 12312

Re: When is Suh going to learn

LionFan57 wrote:

This whole affair has been a huge distraction for the team and it will be interesting to see if Schwartz can channel all this confusion and angst into some tangible results on the field come Sunday in New Orleans.

This is what I've been wondering. Can Schwartz & Co use this as motivation for the rest of the team? Can they channel all the negative press/vibes/etc into an amazing effort on the road in one of the most difficult stadiums to play in? We'll find out in a couple days

Given that only a handful of players have been suspended for on-field conduct during the tenure of Commissioner Roger Goodell, not much attention has been paid to the league’s procedures for such situations.

The Ndamukong Suh case will change that, and the situation demonstrates very real differences between the process for appealing suspensions for on-field actions and suspensions for violation of the league’s steroids, substance abuse, and personal conduct policies.

For example, the league is willing to expedite the appeal of Suh’s suspension, which presumably applies to all other suspensions for on-field behavior. For off-field infractions, the appeal process often takes months. That’s good for the players, to the extent that the players want to get the situation resolved sooner rather than later.

But here’s where it’s not so good for the players. NFL spokesman Greg Aiello tells PFT that, while his appeal is pending, Suh can’t practice with the team.

That’s the opposite of the protocol that applies when players appeal suspensions for steroids, drugs, or personal conduct. Under those policies, the player remains eligible to practice and play until the appeal is resolved.

And it’s objectively unfair to keep the player away from his team pending the outcome of the appeal. What if Art Shell decides on Friday afternoon that Suh shouldn’t be suspended at all? Suh will be less prepared for Sunday night’s game against the Saints than he otherwise would have been, because Suh will be banned from practice.

Schwartz faults Suh for putting Lions in bad positionPosted by Michael David Smith on November 29, 2011, 9:32 PM EST

There’s been talk in the last few days that Lions coach Jim Schwartz deserves some blame for allowing Ndamukong Suh to get out of control. For his part, Schwartz thinks Suh is the one who needs to be accountable.

“It puts the team in a bad position,” Schwartz said of Suh’s two-game suspension, which he earned by stomping on Green Bay’s Evan Dietrich-Smith on Thanksgiving.

In comments to the media today, Schwartz said that what the Lions need from Suh is the same toughness he has exhibited in the past — without the extracurricular activities after the whistle.

“If I remember correctly, this is the first time he has been flagged for something after the whistle,” Schwartz said. “He’s been fined for the [Jay] Cutler hit, a face mask or a hands to the face, or those kind of things, but this is the first one incurred after the whistle. It needs to be his last.”

Schwartz said he thinks the Lions’ defense will suffer from the absence of Suh, but he understands why it happened.

“Obviously, it hurts to lose any player for two games, much less a player like Ndamukong Suh,” Schwartz said. “But there is accountability for our actions. That’s a situation where something happened after the whistle. We want to be as tough and as physical and play as hard as we can between the snap and whistle, but anything that happens after that, we put our team in a bad position that we have to pay the consequences for.”

Suh will suffer the consequences over the next two weeks. It’s Schwartz’s job to see to it that the rest of the team doesn’t suffer while the Lions fight for a wild-card berth. And it’s Schwartz’s job to rein in Suh once he’s back with the team.http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... -position/

Quote:

Mariucci says someone other than Schwartz should discipline SuhPosted by Mike Florio on November 29, 2011, 11:10 PM EST

In his first appearance on PFT Live, NFL Network analyst (and former Lions and 49ers head coach) Steve Mariucci offered his insights on the Ndamukong Suh situation.

On the question of whether the Lions need to do something to reel him in, Mariucci believes that someone other than coach Jim Schwartz needs to do the reeling.

Coach Mariucci pointed out that, when he suspended receiver Terrell Owens after T.O. celebrated on the star at Texas Stadium, Mariucci’s relationship with Owens thereafter became strained. And so, for issues like this, discipline coming from the owner or the front office could allow the coach to maintain the relationship with the player.http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... pline-suh/

Ndamukong Suh seemed like such a level-headed guy when he joined the NFL little more than a season and a half ago. Now, not so much.

A few months before the 2010 NFL draft, when other top picks might have been out pricing a Bentley, Suh pledged to donate $2.6 million to his alma mater, including $600,000 to endow a scholarship at the College of Engineering at Nebraska, from which he graduated with a degree in construction management. By then, he'd also already taken home nearly every important college award a defender can earn, including several which factor in sportsmanship as a component — the Outland, Bednarik, Nagurski and Associated Press Player of the Year awards — and finished fourth in the Heisman balloting to boot.

Suh proved just as dominating as pro as he was in college, being named NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year, and solved any transportation problems soon enough by becoming a pitchman for Chrysler, among others. He was in the express lane for NFL stardom, but not just the kind that results in endorsements. Three times during the 2010 season, Suh starred in film clips that wound up being reviewed by the league's disciplinarians and had his paychecks docked accordingly. Unrepentant, he threw Cincinnati quarterback Andy Dalton to the ground in a preseason game, and by the middle of this season, Suh had already been labeled the NFL's "dirtiest" player in a poll surveying 100 of his peers. Then came the stomp.

By now, you've seen it at least a half dozen times. At the end of a play against Green Bay on Thanksgiving, Suh bounced Packers guard Evan Dietrich-Smith's head into the ground three times, then stomped on his arm. Even more damning is what Suh said afterward, denying he tried to kick Dietrich-Smith: "A lot of people are going to create their own storylines for seeing what they want to interpret, but I know what I did and the man upstairs knows what I did."

Presumably, he wasn't referring to Commissioner Roger Goodell, who, in any case, had few doubts about what he saw. The commish promptly doled out a two-game suspension, taking into account his failure to get his point across to Suh despite at least one face-to-face meeting a few weeks earlier, who-knows how many previous phone conversations covering the same ground, and Suh's place as league leader in both personal fouls and rules violations. Missing two game checks will cost Suh about $165,000. Missing games at New Orleans this Sunday and at home against Minnesota the week after, while the Lions are trying to stay in the NFC wild-card hunt, should drive the point home in a way that money never will.

Suh already posted a half-hearted apology on his Facebook page — "I made a mistake and have learned from it." He's also been assured his appeal will be heard ahead of Sunday's game by Art Shell, whose impartiality is supposed to be assured by drawing his pay from both the league and the players' union, but who also happens to be one of the wiliest offensive linemen to have played the game. During a 14-year, Hall of Fame career, Shell no doubt gave as good as he got and few men would be better qualified to decide which tactics — employed when — qualify as over the top.

The funny thing is that back when Shell played, almost nothing players did on the field qualified. Replay was still in its infancy, and first, you had to get caught. Then, as now, the most feared defensive players were hard hitters. But guys like Dick Butkus and Ray Nitschke, not to mention a few of the defensive linemen Shell practiced against in Oakland, were more feared still because they might twist a finger or ankle temptingly sticking out at the bottom of a pile, or sink their teeth into it. If there was justice to be meted out, it had to happen before the final whistle and away from the gaze of the officials.

Back then, you had to pull a WWE maneuver in full view of everyone in the stadium, which is what Packers defender Charles Martin did while slamming Bears' QB Jim McMahon to the turf in a game nearly 25 years ago, becoming what's believed to be the league's first player suspended for more than a single game for an incident on the playing field. Defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth, then playing for the Titans, became the second in 2006, earning a five-game furlough for swiping his cleats across the head of helmetless Dallas center Andre Gurode. And now there's Suh.

Considering Suh's third-quarter ejection turned a close game against Green Bay into a rout, he's effectively served a half-game already. He might get plenty of sympathy from Shell, but it's unlikely he'll get a reduced sentence. Even more than the suspension, however, the chance to watch a game from the comfort of his couch might finally convince Suh that the cameras catch absolutely everything. And that if he can't learn to control his temper better, he better learn something that Matt Millen, now a TV commentator but previously a tough-guy linebacker for the Raiders, pointed out the other day.

"It's a different game, covered differently these days. What's deemed crazy now, wasn't crazy back in the day. Now more than ever, you have to keep your poise and control emotions when you feel like you have to retaliate," Millen said. "What you learn is, you don't have to get back at the guy right then and that you've got time to take care of field justice."

___

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke(at)ap.org. Follow him at http://Twitter.com/JimLitke.

Mariucci says someone other than Schwartz should discipline SuhPosted by Mike Florio on November 29, 2011, 11:10 PM EST

In his first appearance on PFT Live, NFL Network analyst (and former Lions and 49ers head coach) Steve Mariucci offered his insights on the Ndamukong Suh situation.

On the question of whether the Lions need to do something to reel him in, Mariucci believes that someone other than coach Jim Schwartz needs to do the reeling.

Coach Mariucci pointed out that, when he suspended receiver Terrell Owens after T.O. celebrated on the star at Texas Stadium, Mariucci’s relationship with Owens thereafter became strained. And so, for issues like this, discipline coming from the owner or the front office could allow the coach to maintain the relationship with the player.http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... pline-suh/

From the mouth of one of our biggest coaching failures!! Go figure the coach that shagged us all would be handing out advice on how to deal with a player!

Hey Mooch! Have you had a job in the NFL since you left Detroit?

Thank you very much but please check back in when any one of 32 teams is interested in your brand of leadership and discipline.

Mariucci says someone other than Schwartz should discipline SuhPosted by Mike Florio on November 29, 2011, 11:10 PM EST

In his first appearance on PFT Live, NFL Network analyst (and former Lions and 49ers head coach) Steve Mariucci offered his insights on the Ndamukong Suh situation.

On the question of whether the Lions need to do something to reel him in, Mariucci believes that someone other than coach Jim Schwartz needs to do the reeling.

Coach Mariucci pointed out that, when he suspended receiver Terrell Owens after T.O. celebrated on the star at Texas Stadium, Mariucci’s relationship with Owens thereafter became strained. And so, for issues like this, discipline coming from the owner or the front office could allow the coach to maintain the relationship with the player.http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... pline-suh/

From the mouth of one of our biggest coaching failures!! Go figure the coach that shagged us all would be handing out advice on how to deal with a player!

Hey Mooch! Have you had a job in the NFL since you left Detroit?

Thank you very much but please check back in when any one of 32 teams is interested in your brand of leadership and discipline.

_________________

Follow me on Twitter: @W2G4U

November 30th, 2011, 1:23 pm

Killwill25

Rookie Player of the Year

Joined: March 5th, 2009, 8:42 pmPosts: 2358Location: Brooklyn, NY

Re: When is Suh going to learn

I was talking to my dad(Bears fan; I can tell that he truly fears bubbles for the first time in his life. lol) and he made the mistake of saying "the guy Matt Slausen said that he wasn't liked at Nebreaska and he got in fights all the time." I was like "and who is Matt Slausen? It's just one man's opinion. You did'nt even know who he was before so why do you value his personal opinion now? He sounds jealous" It's just so easy to kick a man when he's down literally and figuratively. You can pretty much say anything negative about Suh you want now and people are in the mood to just feed into it. Suh prolly dominated him in every practice. Hopefully Nick Fairley has a coming out party on Sunday and gives people more reason to hate

The Detroit Lions filled Ndamukong Suh's roster spot today by signing defensive end Keyunta Dawson, who was with the team in training camp.

The Lions were granted a roster exemption while Suh is serving his two-game suspension for stomping an opponent. Suh is appealing the punishment, with a final determination expected before Sunday's game against the New Orleans Saints.

Dawson made 20 starts for the Indianapolis Colts from 2007-09. He was released by the Lions in September.

Nick Fairley, Sammie Hill and Andre Fluellen are expected to share Suh's reps at defensive tackle, but the Lions also are short-handed at defensive end. Lawrence Jackson missed the last two games with a deep thigh bruise and did not practice Tuesday.